The Future

Having reviewed the history of the past five years, I cannot resist taking a brief look at what the next five years may hold for the College. Many would say that our number one problem for the remainder of this decade will be financial. But as the nation works itself out of its present economic problems, the College's situation will automatically improve.

After five years of very rapid change, the College is in need of consolidation. As we work our way out of our financial difficulties, I hope we will have time to concentrate on the quality of education. The changes and the crises caused by external events have been extremely tiring for both faculty and administration; we need a period of relative calm and stability. Yet with our strong and young faculty we have a major opportunity to examine the quality of all that Dartmouth offers, to build on strength and correct the remaining weaknesses.

If further changes are to come, where are they likely to occur? I predict that the trend of expanded interdisciplinary academic efforts will continue. And these efforts will be further strengthened as the four separate faculties of the College gain more experience and confidence in working together. All students at the College should profit from such cooperation. While some of our present interdisciplinary efforts will probably not stand the test of time, other initiatives are sure to be taken. One in which I have a personal interest is a program tentatively called "Policy Design." This program, heavily based on the social sciences, but drawmg on the other faculties, would provide a broad educational opportunity for students who aspire to become the future planners of our nation. It would give "students a background for work in federal, state, and local governments or in the private sector. I believe that weakness in long-range planning is one of the fundamental causes of the current problems of the nation. I would like very much to see Dartmouth make a significant contribution to providing a corps of well trained and highly motivated future planners for our complex social systems. Under one proposal currently being considered, this would be a five-year program leading to an M.A. degree, to allow students enough time both to obtain the very broad training they would need and to acquire a liberal education.

Tuck School is now wrestling with the question of whether its size is below an optimal level. It is possible that a small increase in its student body, and a corresponding increase in its faculty, could further strengthen this strong professional school. The Medical School's major mission, of course, is to make a success °f its three-year M.D. program. This will require further academic endeavors, but above all it will require putting the school on a sound financial footing. Because of its location the Medical School has also a major opportunity to have an impact on rural health care in the United States.

One question the institution must face in the next five years is what the sex ratio should be in the undergraduate enrollment. I am quite certain that in the year 2000 the 15th President of Dartmouth (whether male or female) will find it hard to believe that sex was once one of the criteria influencing admission. But how we will reach that stage is not clear. I favor a slow and gradual change. A major opportunity for change will arise in the decade of the 1980s when there will be a significant decline in the number of 18-year-olds. At that time the College may find it desirable, in order to maintain the high quality of its student body, to decrease the number of male students slightly and to increase the number of women students. It would not take a very drastic change to move from a 3:1 ratio to a 2:1 ratio. We could accomplish this goal in the next decade and still take as large a proportion of the male applicants as now. In the interim, as female applications keep increasing, the College may find it desirable to increase the size of the freshman class from 1,050 to 1,100 to make more places available to women.

The College has experienced a very large change in its size during the last 80 years. I hope very much that compared to our past history the future will be one of stability or of very slow increase. I happen to believe that the size of the College is "just right." If we doubled the size of Dartmouth we would lose the close contact between faculty and faculty and between faculty and students that is so essential for the quality of the institution. We also must recognize that there is a limit to the size the small town of Hanover can support. We should never give up the open areas now available on our campus, nor should we allow its size to increase to the point where walking from one end of the campus to the other is more than an easy stroll.

With Dartmouth having experienced a great amount of construction recently, I hope that we will see very little of it for at least the next five years. The Trustees are considering whether a modest addition to the dormitory system is necessary. Hopkins Center also needs some additional space, as I described earlier. But in general I hope that we will think not in terms of new buildings but in terms of improving existing facilities to optimize their use.

I would like to insert one "far-out" idea into these speculations. As one examines the range of education offered at Dartmouth, one ingredient clearly missing is a law school. Some day this may be a desirable project for the Trustees to undertake. It is the one professional area attracting a large number of our students for which we do not provide role models on the campus. A law school would also have important interactions with medicine and business, as well as with the undergraduate curriculum. While I once thought that such a project would be hopelessly expensive, I have been persuaded by some able and thoughtful alumni that it is possible to have a law school which is both small and of very high quality. And apparently law schools are much less expensive to operate than other professional schools.

What will Dartmouth be like in 1980? It will be an institution not much larger than the present one, in which undergraduates vastly outnumber the total of graduate and professional students. I hope that it will be an institution that shows an ever-increasing concern for the quality of education, and that has consolidated and improved the innovations of the past few years. I hope to see continued strengthening of our professional schools that play such an important role in shaping the character of the College. But my fundamental aim has been to have Dartmouth College recognized as providing the best undergraduate education in the country. I pledge my energies in the future to that goal.

The photographs in this report were taken by Adrian Bouchard and Jim Tyre '75 of the Aegis.